FishProfiles.com Message Forums

Finally. I'd pretty much given up keeping rams. All I have is bad luck. When I tried to keep them at my mom's house the tank got too much traffic by it. When I moved the surviving ram from that tank to the one in my bedroom he got himself stuck in the crack of a cave. Now that I've moved in with my boyfriend I tried to keep rams again. When I finally got a pair the female got attacked overnight by a young opaline gourami they'd been sharing the tank with for 2months. She died the next day leaving me with 2 males. One of which died from internal parasites. I searched for weeks and all I could find were some sad looking rams and there was only 1 possible female out of a tank of 1 dozen. Since I had store credit I went ahead and got that one but it turned out to be male and despite careful acclimating was in too sad of shape to survive. Finally the better store got in some good looking rams again but they were too young to really tell gender so I bought 2 and ended up with 1 male and 1 female. The next day the female got herself stuck behind a rock that had looked like it was flat against the glass. I exchanged her for another female and finished my 10g ram tank. For the past 2 weeks or so I've had the adult male, young male, young female, and 3 female guppies in the 10g tank.

Surprisingly about 5days ago they laid eggs on the driftwood. I expected their first batch to get eaten but they gaurded them very well. Now they have a group of about 3 dozen fry gathered over some moss and algae covered rocks. They take turns keeping the other fish on the far side of the tank while one keeps the fry gathered away from the filter. They haven't even torn a fin on the other fish though. Should I just leave them alone now? When I fed them today they left the fry and allowed some to spread out which got picked off by the other male ram. Catching the other male though will probably require chasing him around the whole tank and disturbing the breeding pair. Also the fry can get sucked into the filter but I didn't expect them to breed yet so I hadn't finished deciding what filtration I wanted to run and the rams are keeping them away from the filter. I have an internal filter that runs about 40gph. Would that be enough to filter the tank without sucking up the fry? Maybe I should just leave this batch to see what lives and dies and then decide what changes to make. They've done very well so far.

what type of rams? i had 2 bolivians for a few months, but the male up and dies suddenly, and the female dies a few weeks ago, so last wednsday i went out and bought 2 male blue rams, and two bolivians....a few days later i found out my walmart started to carry rams, to i got 2 female blue rams. 2 days ago, a male blue ram died, then last night i saw the two females were dead also, so i picked out oe, but i cant get to the other (sick i know) so NOW i have to move the remaining male blue ram and the two bolivians into my 20 long....grr. also, when i tried my first blue and gold rams they lasted about a week in my 55 gallon i love rams, but have such crummy luck with them! what is a good way to lower my ph for them?

oh, and congradulations

Mikrogeophagus ramirezi are extremely e to parasites and need near perfect water at all times. I have been told by many people that if you want one go through a private breeder or your gaurenteed parasites.

Another problem is that some fish farms use horomones to stimulate color which is extremely harmful to the fish and often results in death.

"A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man" Simpsons

congrats on the success.

They are blue rams. I've only seen bolivians once. I wanted to also get a gold female but the same store that had the sickly looking all male blues is the only one that gets golds and again they were all male. Probably from hormone using fish farms.

The store I got the female from gets rams from a small breeder so they don't have them often but they are nearly always good quality and have even spawned in the store tanks in 8.0ph water. Currently for all my freshwater tanks I'm using ro water reconstituted with kent ph stable and seachem equilibrium to 6dkh, 6dgh, and a ph of 7.4. Then for the ram tank I added a bag of peat granules to lower the ph down to 6.8 and seachem's purigen to remove any coloration from the peat. Also the nitrates on this tank have not surpassed 5ppm since it was setup even though water changes have been minimal.